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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28729431">Memories in the Melody</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_little_cinnamon_roll/pseuds/sweet_little_cinnamon_roll'>sweet_little_cinnamon_roll</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Song of the Sea [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>No Fandom, Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesia, Androgyny, Battle, Courtship, F/M, Families of Choice, Female Character of Color, Fishing, Kidnapping, Navy, Ocean, Pirates, Separation Anxiety, Sisters, Small Towns, Storms, Strong Female Characters, Superstition, The Ocean is kinda like God, Unintentional Heroes, War, betrothal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:13:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,884</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28729431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_little_cinnamon_roll/pseuds/sweet_little_cinnamon_roll</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lauran, Agatha, and Sharlette<br/>Doctor, Scholar, and Bar-maid<br/>Pale, Tan, and Dark<br/>Tall, Average, and Short<br/>Feminine, Androgynes, and Hoyden</p><p>Three distinctly different girls and yet sisters all the same. Found together on the small fishing island the morning after 'The Storm of the Century' with none of their memories. The three make a life for themselves together and never quite question the mystery of their past until rouge pirates destroy their island, and it's only when the entire land has erupted into chaos that they realize who they were may be the key to saving them all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Song of the Sea [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106108</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Memories in the Melody</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is mostly set-up and background knowledge for the main characters. It probably has grammatical errors.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>BOOM!<br/>
</p><p>The deafening sound of cannons firing was not something that one could ever get used to. One blast firing right after another: BOOMBOOMBOOM all through the night. Should they ever be in this circumstance, most children would be huddled under some large object, a bed or a couch perhaps, but not Lauran. No, the repeated concussive blasts lulled Lauran into sleep.<br/>
</p><p>Sharlette, on the other hand, was wide awake, but she too did not seem bothered by the noise. Sharlette was just… bored.<br/>
</p><p>BOOM! 1… 2… 3… Boom! 1… 2… BOOM!<br/>
________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>"Lauran!” A cry woke Laura from her slumber. “Darling, you must wake up!”<br/>
</p><p>“Is't over?" Lauran attempted to rub the tired out of her eyes. "C’n I go on deck?”<br/>
</p><p>“No, Darling it isn’t over. Daddy’s still trying to… straighten a few things out.”<br/>
</p><p>“Do I have to leave again?”<br/>
</p><p>“Yes, but this is the last time,” her mother promised. “You’ll be back in the morning.”<br/>
</p><p>“Are you certain?”<br/>
</p><p>“Absolutely.”<br/>
________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>“Sharlette,” a stout girl whispered from the doorway, “are you still up child?”<br/>
</p><p>“Yes.” Sharlette looked to the doorway, uncertainty in her eyes. “Who’s been invaded?”<br/>
</p><p>“It’s unclear. What I do know is that your parents have decided it’s time for you to go.”<br/>
</p><p>“A captain always goes down with their ship,” Sharlette stated firmly, taking a seat on the wooden floor.<br/>
</p><p>“You’re not the captain, and the ship’s not sinking.”<br/>
</p><p>“Fine.”<br/>
________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>On a ship not too far from the fight occurring,  a third girl also could not sleep, but Agatha's unease came from the storm itself.<br/>
</p><p>"Agatha, darling! Please go back to sleep. You must look presentable in the morning." Her mother attempted to push Agatha back into her cabin "What will they think when you fall asleep in the Grand Hall during the meal! Now shoo!"<br/>
</p><p>"But mother I can't sleep with the constant oscillation." Agatha replied with a straight voice "What if the ship were to capsize? Professor Markson says this is the largest storm recorded in a Millenia. If that is the case, we're more likely to be dining with a saltwater theme than with whoever you're trying to sell me off to this week."<br/>
</p><p>"Betrothal is not selling you off, Agatha, we've had this discussion before. It's finding-"<br/>
</p><p>"Finding a proper husband for my future to guarantee the continued well being of your precious child."<br/>
</p><p>"Yes an act of love! To know you will always be taken care of even if your father and I are dead." Agatha rolled her eyes before returning to the cabin.<br/>
________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>The Night of the Terrible Storm they would call it. Three girls went missing that night presumed dead, drowned in the sea. Black hung over the whole country in both the land and the still churning waters. The world seemed bleak with the loss of those three. How, they asked themselves, would they continue when the future of their kingdoms had been lost by the very thing that should unite them?<br/>
________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>The first thing they felt was the sun; it was warm upon their backs. Then they felt the sand, sticking to their faces and strewn in their hair, but it was neither sand nor the sun that woke the girls.<br/>
</p><p>“Harold!” a gruff voice called out. “HAROLD!”<br/>
</p><p>“WHAT!?”<br/>
</p><p>“GET OVER HERE!”<br/>
</p><p>“Dear Lord in heaven above!”<br/>
</p><p>It was the voices of the fishermen who found them that pulled the three girls from their slumber. They stirred from the voices which ensured the fishermen that they were, in fact, not dead. Lifting her head one of the girls further solidified their state of wellbeing. Beside her, the other two started shifting. </p><p>Attempting to open her eyes, Lauran started pushing herself up. She could feel the pounding on the inside of her skull, right behind her eyes. “Why was everything so bright, and so loud?” the young girl thought to herself. “What was with all the yelling? Didn’t they know she was trying to sleep?”<br/>
</p><p>It turned out the fishermen were unconcerned with Lauran’s desire for a peaceful slumber. More interesting was the three vastly different girls who had, looking half dead, appeared on their beach the morning after the storm of the century. “How had they survived? Who were their parents? Where were they from?” they asked, but as much as the girls wanted to answer, they couldn’t.<br/>
</p><p>The fishermen had escorted the three girls off the beach and into a quaint little cottage just halfway between the boat docks and the center of town. Inside Harold’s wife, Marcella, the only nurse on the island,  set out to make the poor things some breakfast and tea to warm them up. When asked about their past the girls couldn’t remember.<br/>
</p><p>________________________________________<br/>
</p><p>“I don’t know!” tears of frustration welled in Lauran’s eyes.<br/>
</p><p>“Oh, darlin’ there’s no need to cry here. It happens that a’way sometimes.” The second fisherman, called Rybar, pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket. After inspecting it he smiled, causing more wrinkles in his face, before handing it to the trembling girl.<br/>
</p><p>“The sea is harsh sometimes,” Harold said in agreement.<br/>
</p><p>Sharlette lowered her head. “But she is gentle to those who love her… those she knows are pure and good,” she whispered, low enough that the old men couldn't hear her. "I know the sea is gentle to her people." Lauran couldn’t find a fault in Sharlette’s statement, but the young blonde still didn’t feel like she would willingly step foot on a boat anytime soon.<br/>
</p><p>"I guess the only thing we can do now is to figure out where we're going to put you.” Rybar stood up from his stool. "I'm sure there are some folks in the village who can take a bright girl like one of you in. Of course, this isn't the first time our island has had to figure out what to do with children without having a single idea of where their parents are or…" he trailed off. "For now all three of you will stay with me."<br/>
</p><p>“Are you going to separate us?” the third girl asked after she looked up from where she had been sipping her tea. Although not as talkative as the other two girls, they had learned her name was Agatha. “I would prefer to stay with Sharlette and Lauran if at all possible.”<br/>
</p><p>“I don’t know dear. There’s probably not many people who can take all three of you in permanently and besides we’re a small village. You’d be seeing each other daily anyway.”<br/>
</p><p>“I think I speak for all of us when I say, we’d rather sail through uncharted waters in a typhoon than be separated,” The quiet girl spoke with a determined tone as if her word alone was final.</p><p>But they heard the message: Laran, Sharlette, and Agatha would not be given to different families. They had already formed one for themselves. The girls ended up staying with Harold and Martha; Rybar was a regular dinner time companion. But as they grew in their tiny village everyone came to know and love the three girls.<br/>
</p><p>Agatha was the quiet older sister watching thoughtfully before she spoke out. Her nose was always behind book and calculating look in her eyes. Lauran was the youngest, emotional but she knew what she wanted and how she would get it. The sweetheart that everyone knew to not underestimate after one incident where Johnathan ended up stuck in a tree because he thought since Lauran was younger than he and a girl messing with her would be easy. Sharlette led with her heart and was Harold’s favorite. Always out fishing and on the water in their islands natural harbor, but never out to sea.<br/>
</p><p>No one could blame them but the girls refused point-blank to go out on the sea. Agatha and Lauran refused to even go on the docks. But still, they could sit and watch the waves for hours with their books and art or other little projects at their side.  For being 11 and 10 years old, Agatha, Sharlette, and Lauran were considered geniuses in their small fishing town. The three girls had more education under their belts than many of the grown men, but they yearned to know more. The town rallied together and paid for a tutor from the mainland to aid the girls in their studies. By 13 and 14 the girls became masters in their chosen fields of study and the tutor could no longer help them.</p><p>Agatha became the youngest known scholar and writing critic, well known on the mainland although only by the name A. Gatha.  Lauran learned the art of biology. Sharlette became a historian and cartographer, but she also dabbled in the culinary arts (her meals becoming a form of currency in the village).<br/>
</p><p>Three years into their stay on the island Rybar and Harold were out to sea when another storm hit across the land- not quite as large as the girls’ storm but still larger than the average storm. They didn’t come back. The girls were devastated, as was Marcella. She was old and the death of her husband took a toll on her. The girls’ maternal figure grew more ill by the day. Lauran dove into the study of medicine hoping to find something to save her, but he found no cure. With Marcella dead, Lauran became distant and buried herself in books of medicine and science claiming becoming a nurse was a way to keep Marcella’s memory alive.  By the time Lauran was 15, the island came to her every time there was a medical issue.</p><p>At 16 Sharlette opened a small pub or inn which quickly became the jewel of the town. Shipping boats often docked in the town’s little bay staying the night only to taste Sharlette’s food. There was never a brawl inside that lasted for more than a second. In fact, Sharlette was the one to start most of the fights; protecting her lovely sister from creeps who didn’t often get told no. Most people feared the threat of permanent exile from Sharlette’s Inn to cause any trouble around the short tempered bar-maid.<br/>
</p><p>For a few short years, the island flourished thanks to the three girls and what they brought to their beloved island. The old home of Harold and Marcella officially became the girls. The quaint home where their earliest memories were formed was safely theirs once more. Although Sharlette came home late more times than not, and Lauran was pulled away in the dead of night only to return mid-day, the girls' bond never waned.<br/>
</p><p>They were all they had left in the world; after all, a shared experience like theirs was unusual and brought up a million problems only the three themselves could understand. They may have lost all sense of themselves and their history before the storm, but they had each other to help make themselves who they were in their present.</p><p>But as we all know in tales like our not all good things are meant to last. And so our story beings on a seemingly inconsequential  yet rare morning where Sharlette had come home early the night before, Lauran hadn't been called out early in the morning. A day with no expectations where our girls could be together.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have no time frame for when I will post another chapter but boy do I have plans for what is in in</p></blockquote></div></div>
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